Friday, September 24, 2010

UK Entrepreneur to open school for dyslexic children

THE first dedicated centre for youngsters in Wales with dyslexia will open next month. The not for profit Tomorrow’s Generation Trust will initially provide specialist dyslexic teaching during the school holidays and during weekends.

The trust was set up by Swedish-born entrepreneur Anders Hedlund who, like his father and son, also has dyslexia. The school is based at his home in Cardiff, in a 1,400 sq ft environmentally friendly building with solar panels and a rain harvesting system.

Mr Hedlund, the founder of Christmas cracker-to-gift- wrap company International Greetings, said the strategy was to provide specialist teaching, based on dyslexia software such as Lexion, which is used with successful results in 80% of schools in Sweden.

“It has always been my dream to help dyslexic kids in Wales,” he said. “Our aim is to be the number one school for dyslexia in the world. It will take time, but the strategy is also to establish satellite schools in other cities in the UK and potentially overseas.”

Mr Hedlund said many youngsters with dyslexia were wrongly diagnosed with having behaviour problems, and as a result were unfairly labelled as “lazy and stupid”.

“It is therefore not surprising that youngsters with dyslexia suffer from low self-esteem,” he said.
“Our vision is to get the kids back into conventional schools as quickly as we can. And when they do, near the top of the class rather than the bottom.

“It is all about providing them with the right toolkit to be successful back in the mainstream.”